Air America host arrested for disrupting Allen West town hall event

Local police arrested a woman who appears to be former liberal radio network Air America host Nicole Sandler while she was disrupting Rep. Allen West’s Tuesday town hall event in Fort Lauderdale and harassing the Congressman’s wife. According to video obtained by Florida blogger Javier Manjarres, known better online as The Shark Tank, police charged Sandler, who revealed her name on camera, with trespassing after they removed her from the event and she “continued her tirade and used an expletive to address a police officer.”

With Air America now defunct, Sandler hosts a self-described “progressive talk radio” show at RadioOrNot.com.

In video he shot of the town hall, several hecklers Manjarres says were “planted” shouted over West as he began speaking at the event. At least one other man was removed from the event. After the hecklers continued disrupting West’s comments, the freshman Congressman shot back at them: “You’re not going to intimidate me.”

WATCH: Video of the Rep. Allen West hecklers, and former Air America host Nicole Sandler getting arrested:

West continued speaking after a police officer removed one man from the room the event was held in. Manjarres reports that, “minutes later,” the ultimately-arrested Sandler began harassing West and his wife.

According to the Palm Beach Post, the people who disrupted West’s town hall did so because they were not pleased with his pre-event condition that he’d take only written questions submitted before the event. The Post reports that police escorted two men out of the event and that questions hecklers asked included, “How about our Medicare that you’re stealing?” and “How about allowing questions from the audience?”

The crowd’s size, according to the Post, was about 500 people.

Responding to the Post story but not the Manjarres video due to technical difficulties, Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff told The Daily Caller that “Floridians are disappointed that Allen West refused to answer the hard questions from his constituents, who are clearly upset with his voting to end Medicare.”

“Once again tonight, we see that Allen West is completely out of touch with the people of South Florida, which is why they are going to send him into retirement in 2012,” Jotkoff said in an e-mail.

West did not immediately respond to TheDC’s requests for comment and the local police department was not available for comment late Tuesday evening.